Viggo Mortensen News @ Brego.net

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

David Cronenberg's upcoming film based on Christopher Hampton's play, The Talking Cure, has been renamed "A Dangerous Method." According to Production Weekly, filming starts next month at locations in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich. No release date has been set, but the film is expected to be released in 2011.

Overshadowed by portents of the coming wars, Zurich and Vienna are the setting for this tale of emotional vicissitude and intellectual debate. The Talking Cure is an intimate picture of the birth of psychoanalysis and of two intense and inextricably interwoven relationships. Carl Jung uses Sigmund Freud's "talking cure" on Sabina, a young Russian hysteric with whom he will fall in love. Impressed with Jung's results, Freud anoints him his successor, but when Jung develops his own theories they part ways. Sensitive and intelligent, The Talking Cure illuminates the origins of one of the twentieth century's most influential schools of thought.

Keira Knightley will play Jung's patient Sabina Spielrein. Vincent Cassel ("Kirill" in Eastern Promises) also has a not-yet specified part. Christoph Waltz was originally signed to play Freud, but backed out in March to accept a leading role in Water for Elephants. We're delighted that Cronenberg was able to replace Waltz with Viggo Mortensen.

It's the first time I've ever been in a situation where I actually want to do a sequel to something. I've never had the desire to do that before. But in this case, I thought we had unfinished business with those characters. I didn't feel that we had finished with Nikolai and we had done a lot of research that was more than we could stuff into that one movie.

Cronenberg indicated that Viggo Mortensen's character, Nikolai, will be the focus of the new movie but that it is too early to tell whether other central characters from Eastern Promises would be included.

According to MTV News,

Cronenberg is simply intrigued by the opportunity to reunite with Mortensen for a third film. "Viggo is a very special guy," said Cronenberg. "I consider him a personal friend and we communicate all the time. That doesn't always happen with actors. He's very serious about his acting. But he's really a funny guy. We laugh a lot. We giggle a lot."

Hope this pans out as we also want to know what happens next with Nikolai!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg appeared on NPR's Fresh Air from WHYY today. Host Terry Gross had a great time asking them about the making of their new film Eastern Promises. Topics included Viggo's Russian accent, the tattoos, how to best photograph blood, and of course the steam bath scene in which a naked Mortensen fights several assailants. Listen to the show online or subscribe to the Fresh Air podcast. More about the film on our Eastern Promises page.